Last Place

There is a man in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, right now — a Jewish attorney from South Florida named Jared Firestone — hurtling face-first down an ice track on a sled the size of a cafeteria tray. He is representing Israel in skeleton at the Winter Olympics.

He finished twenty-second out of twenty-four competitors. He is thrilled.

Last week, at the opening ceremony in Milan, Firestone carried the Israeli flag while wearing a kippah embroidered with the names of the eleven Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Games. The crowd booed when Israel's delegation was announced. Firestone walked out anyway, flag held high, six-pointed star on his helmet, grinning.

This is Parashat Mishpatim — the Torah portion where, after all the thunder and lightning and revelation at Sinai, God says: now here are the rules about oxen.

Seriously. The most dramatic moment in Jewish history just happened — the giving of the Torah, smoke on the mountain, a voice from the heavens — and the very next thing we read is a civil code. Liability for property damage. What happens if someone's animal falls into an uncovered pit. How to treat a hired worker. Fifty-three laws, one after another, in careful, mundane detail.

וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם׃

These are the rules that you shall set before them:

— Shemot 21:1

The Talmud has a famous teaching about what happened next. When the Israelites said naaseh v'nishma — we will do and we will understand — a heavenly voice asked: who revealed this secret to My children? The secret of angels. Because angels do first and ask questions later.

But look at the context. Naaseh v'nishma doesn't come during the thunderbolts. It comes here, in Mishpatim, after Moses has read them the civil code — the boring stuff, the details, the fine print of being a people.

וַיִּקַּח֙ סֵ֣פֶר הַבְּרִ֔ית וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּאׇזְנֵ֣י הָעָ֑ם וַיֹּ֣אמְר֔וּ כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה נַעֲשֶׂ֥ה וְנִשְׁמָֽע׃

Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that GOD has spoken we will faithfully do!”

— Shemot 24:7

We will do and we will understand. Not: we will understand and then decide if we're in. We're in. We'll figure out the rest as we go.

That is what Jared Firestone is doing on an ice track in Italy. He tore his bicep in 2022 and didn't know if he'd ever slide again. Then October 7 happened, and two days later he was back in the gym, because the question wasn't whether he could win — he couldn't — but whether he'd show up. "What's my unique contribution that only I can do to support Israel and support Jewish people, and give them some sense of pride?" he told the Times of Israel. "That was to do skeleton."

Israel sent nine athletes to these Games — the country's largest Winter Olympics delegation ever. Five of them are on the bobsled team, which the press has been calling Shul Runnings. The pilot, AJ Edelman, is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to compete in a Winter Olympics. The team includes a Druze athlete, Ward Fawarseh.

Before the Games, someone broke into their training apartment in Prague and stole their passports and equipment. A Swiss television commentator spent an entire run questioning whether the Israeli team should even be allowed to compete. They showed up anyway.

This Shabbat is also Shabbat Shekalim — the special reading about the half-shekel tax, and the opening verse tells you everything you need to know about the theology of showing up:

זֶ֣ה ׀ יִתְּנ֗וּ כׇּל־הָעֹבֵר֙ עַל־הַפְּקֻדִ֔ים מַחֲצִ֥ית הַשֶּׁ֖קֶל בְּשֶׁ֣קֶל הַקֹּ֑דֶשׁ עֶשְׂרִ֤ים גֵּרָה֙ הַשֶּׁ֔קֶל מַחֲצִ֣ית הַשֶּׁ֔קֶל תְּרוּמָ֖ה לַֽיהֹוָֽה׃

This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight—twenty gerahs to the shekel—a half-shekel as an offering to GOD.

— Shemot 30:13

Everyone gives the same amount. Rich and poor, strong and weak. Not a whole shekel — a half. Because no individual contribution is complete on its own. You bring your half. Someone else brings theirs. The whole thing only works when everyone is counted.

A twenty-second-place skeleton finish and a gold medal count the same in the machatzit hashekel — the half-shekel. You showed up. You were counted.

I keep thinking about this while hearing about the Games (I haven't watched the Olympics in a very long time, sorry.) Yesterday at our Torah study, someone asked why Mishpatim comes right after Yitro — why the oxen and pits follow the Ten Utterances so abruptly.

The answer, I think, is that the thunder was never the point. The thunder is what gets your attention. The oxen are where you live.

Judaism is not a peak experience. It is a random Tuesday-night obligation to return your neighbor's lost property. To sanctify the ordinary.

Mishpatim also says something twice — which in Torah means pay attention — about the stranger:

וְגֵ֥ר לֹא־תוֹנֶ֖ה וְלֹ֣א תִלְחָצֶ֑נּוּ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃

You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

— Shemot 22:20

And again, a chapter later — you know the feelings of the stranger, because you were strangers. The word for "feelings" there is nefesh. Soul. You know the soul of the stranger. Not the experience. Not the history. The soul.

I can tell you what that feels like from one direction. Choosing Judaism meant choosing, among other things, to show up for the boring parts — to care about the civil code, to learn the details, to say naaseh v'nishma about a tradition I had not been born into. The mountaintop moment is the mikveh, the beit din. The oxen and pits come every hour after.

Friday morning I'll do what I do most Fridays — check the candle-lighting time, make sure the house is ready for Shabbat, start the food prep.

None of it makes headlines. None of it needs to. The half-shekel doesn't ask you to be extraordinary. It asks you to bring your part.

In Cortina right now, a Jewish attorney from Florida is celebrating the fact that he showed up. In Milan, a twenty-year-old Israeli figure skater named Mariia Seniuk carried the flag alongside him. In a bobsled nicknamed Shul Runnings, an Orthodox pilot and a Druze alternate and a team of first-timers slid down a track in last place and called themselves victors.

They brought theirs.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham